The appearance of a strange spiral light in the skies above Norway yesterday has prompted plenty of debate about its origin.

In the amazing amateur photos of the incident, a large spiral could be seen spinning across a large section of the sky, followed by a huge blue plume.

Norwegian astronomer Knut Jorgen was quoted as saying: "My first thought was a fireball meteor. It is definitely not the Aurora Borealis."

The New Scientist said it was an out-of-control missile, specifically the Russian Bulava ballistic missile, which has had a string of launch failures.

Russia has been trying to perfect the design of the missile without much success. If this event was another failed launch, it would be the seventh failure in 12 attempts since 2005.

Although Russia denied that they had launched anything on Wednesday, Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said: "This could be because another Bulava failure is a huge and embarrassing setback for their programme."

If it was Russia, you'd have thought they'd take credit for such an amazing fireworks show.

On YouTube, the consensus was clear: the aliens (haven't quite) landed. Lionheart334299 seemed particularly convinced, saying: "Those were aliens for sure, they are gathering and definitely several races not just one are coming to make contact with us soon..."

Have your say on the lights by commenting below. In order to leave a comment you need to be a registered user of Mirror.co.uk. Click here to sign up.